Dairy Plant Reduces Product Waste at Fillers with Anderson-Negele’s ITM-51 Turbidity Sensor

Rodem was approached by one of our Southern dairy plant customers looking for a solution to reduce the excessive waste at their fillers during changeover. Rodem engineers designed a system that used the Anderson-Negele ITM-51 turbidity sensors close to the fillers to eliminate waste and speed up changeovers.

The Anderson-Negele ITM-51 turbidity sensor can automatically trigger the optimum transition point with extreme reliability and precision in contrast to alternative methods, such as timing and sight. Timing and sight methods are prone to error due to a number of variables. By using turbidity for transitions the dairy plant was able to achieve secure and reliable changeover without risking product loss.

What is Turbidity?

Rodem’s partner, Anderson-Negele defines turbidity as “the phenomenon whereby a specific portion of a light beam passing through a liquid medium is reflected by undissolved particles. The ITM-51 sensor measures the light that is reflected by these particles to determine their concentration in the liquid.” For example, purified water would have nearly zero undissolved particles, while an ice cream mix would have a high concentration of them.

How Turbidity Provides Cost Savings

The ITM-51 inline turbidity sensor can be installed at leverage points in the process, as this customer did at the filler, to facilitate instant detection of the following phase changes:

•  Product-to-Product
•  Product-to-Water

The ITM-51 turbidity sensor allows immediate and accurate monitoring of product changeovers or CIP programs by detecting the instant a liquid medium reaches a pre-defined specification.

Rapid ROI